Is this anti-semitism?

http://guanabee.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/isabel_mastache_fall_winter_2010_cibeles_es_es_1266566285203.jpg

thanks buffandmaxsmom

tooshay

dry but helpful

Meantime, Sullivan's seen the comic and all and is duly disenchanted:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/06/the-anti-semitism-behind-san-franciscos-anti-circumcision-proposal.html

has he determined if trig was circumcised?

There's plenty of dumb old testament shit that people don't do anymore because people have woken up and decided to apply common sense to their lives instead of the arbitrary rules of a fer-christs-sake god. A god. Don't chop up your children until they an give informed consent, imo. I'm not saying people need to make laws or anything - this isn't on the level of murdering homosexuals or selling your daughter or whatever. But this is totally arbitrary at this point and worthy of the making of fun.

i don't think there's much point to it anymore either but when the old testament was written and health and hygiene were unrecognizably different than in the modern first world it made more sense. people make up god-commandments sure but they don't just pull them out of a hat.

or maybe they just wanted to make sure nobody was having too good a time. i dunno.

Oh sure! Things were mad different back then! But shit changes...we got the internet now.

AND I'LL NEVER KNOW, NOW

Don't chop up your children until they an give informed consent, imo. I'm not saying people need to make laws or anything

^100% agree with this.

Going back to before this stuff was traditionally/routinely done - how did circumcision start? I mean who was the first guy to think "I'm going to cut a bit of my son's dick off" and WTF was he thinking?

o_O @ Foreskin Man wtf

Like mythologically? It was Abraham and he was thinking, "God told me to circumcise myself and my sons. Better get to that." Historically I have no idea.

This might be a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision

god collects prepuces to make a coat iirc

xp Hygiene was one reason why circumcision was promoted in the US starting in the late nineteenth century, but the main reason was to prevent masturbation. Really. Why the doctors didn't realize that there are other methods of male masturbation other than moving the foreskin up and down, I don't know.

far be it from me to say this is the weirdest bit of the bible. but it's pretty weird.

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.

Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision

read that last night, oddly enough. it is fascinatingly oblique.

There's a whole midrash about that. Moses neglected to circumcise his kids in a timely manner so God sent a snake to swallow him. The snake had like halfway Moses when his wife went and did the circumcision herself and saved her husband's life.

halfway eaten*

there's a line a little later where Moses describes himself as having "uncircumcised lips". could be a mistaken transposition of an epithet applied to Pharaoh but i love this unexplained mysteriousness.

i think actually not just halfway, but like had swallowed him on both ends in such a way as to leave just his own penis uncovered and that's how Tzipporah knew that the problem was circumcision related

reading that recently too, it is one of those deep dark strange moments of the bible.

xp
cool that clears it up.

or, more seriously, I am entirely intrigued - where's a midrash like that come from? How does the snake get involved?

I've always kinda wondered why circumcision became so popular in the US during the 20th century, while it was/is much rarer in Europe. Wikipedia says it was because of doctors promoted it as healthy, and because it was thought to stop boys from masturbating, but why didn't those same justifications apply in Continental Europe? And why was/is the practice still continued in the US, even though neither of those justifications is hardly relevant today? Is it only because parents didn't/don't want their kids to be different from the majority?

xp This particular story is from the Exodus Rabbah which was compiled around 12th century which was itself developed from various midrashic traditions (primarily Tanhuma iirc). The Tanhuma parts at least come from the amoraic generation (200 CE in Israelish). So it's probably from there. It may be an oral tradition that developed alongside the written tradition, or it may have been invented as a homiletic in 200 CE. Also look here for a fuller description (and some exegesis): http://books.google.com/books?id=nAfUF2_ClqgC&lpg=PA18&ots=nM-k4VWX_K&dq=haberman%20foreskin%20sacrifice&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false

I'm spitballing here bc I've never studied this particular midrash in depth but I'd guess the serpent/snake angle is related to Moses' staff turning into a snake since that's a huge motif for him. (Obv other snake references could be the healer staff + the Eden snake, but it strikes me as more likely that it'd be referring to Moses' personal experience with snakes.) Also there's the obvious phallic imagery, etc.

The Mark book I linked to, btw, claims that the snake is mirroring the Eve narrative. Eve was naive but Zipporah "immediately grasps life and death confronting her in one instant. She is fuly conscious of her position of power and responsibility at the nexus of her intersecting erotic connections with God, her son, and her lover." Also of note, the Talmud derives from this narrative (again IIRC, it's been years since I looked at this partic passage) that if a father does not circumcise his son, a mother become obligated in the commandment.

I don't really have much useful to say to this but reading this thread has made me realise that this is going to be a huge issue if I ever have a son :(

xp
thanks for the links & info Mordy, totally fascinating.

why didn't those same justifications apply in Continental Europe?

long honourable tradition of massive anti-Semitism

I don't think that fully answers it, anti-semitism wasn't that strong everywhere in Europe. (Also, there were anti-semites in the US too: did they leave their kids uncut?)

why didn't those same justifications apply in Continental Europe?

long honourable tradition of massive anti-Semitism

― aka best bum of the o_O's (Noodle Vague), Monday, June 6, 2011 4:03 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

lol was about to post more inflammatory version of this but i don't think it's true. i had never heard the 'anti-masturbation theory', daaaaamn.

If the idea of infant circumcision was to prevent masturbation in later life, I can tell you that the theory is not empirically sound.

As opposed to all the other early 1900s theories about sexuality?

the non-religious uses of circumcision seem to be more related to old school "hey here is this bit of the body that doesn't really do anything and sometimes it can get infected let's just chop it off eh?" just like appendix tonsils adenoids etc. prophylactic surgery just seems to have been more of a thing back in the day

Some early 1900s sexual theorists actually believed that sexual repression was bad for humans. Mainstream culture professed to be shocked, but were seceretly fascinated.

Mainstream culture professed to be shocked, but were seceretly fascinated. horny.

His first comic, released last summer, featured an evil Doctor Mutilation, who circumcised boys for medical, not religious, reasons.

"Nobody came out and complained about doctor bias," Hess said. There's "no difference" between portraying an evil doctor and an evil religious figure, he said.

fuck this douchebag

Is it only because parents didn't/don't want their kids to be different from the majority?

I've come across more than a few women who initially thought the idea of an uncircumsized penis was gross or weird.

Most women I've come across profess a fascination with it.

oh word?

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.

Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision

this always baffled and fascinated me too -- it's like a 'twin peaks' style dream interlude in the middle of an otherwise straightforward narrative.

even if you can figure out what's going on, here's the logic of the story:

god (i repeat: GOD) tries to kill somebody, and FAILS because someone performs a CIRCUMCISION.

god was a new hire back then. he used to fuck shit up all the time.

Love the Old Testament -- lots of weird, unexpected shit.

god, squeamish at sight of blood. Hence new testament departure more aimed at his strong points.

Yeah for reading pleasure/surprise per minute I vote Pentateuch over Epistles any day.

one good thing about not having a foreskin is your foreskin will never rupture and bleed during sex

god (i repeat: GOD) tries to kill somebody, and FAILS because someone performs a CIRCUMCISION.

there's also the jarring leap from the previous verses where God is all tasking up Moses with this important task.

GOD: Moses, get thee to Egpyt
Moses: Ok yo
GOD: Die motherfucker!